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Showing posts from September, 2010

Money Town

One of the cabins was at the bottom of a hill, and for some reason the remodelers had sealed the crawlspace. Heat wicks moisture out of the ground, so the crawlspace filled with several inches of water. When Dad opened the door there the first time and played his flashlight around, he saw a fungal bloom on the scale of a biblical plague. Every surface was covered with several inches of moist and springy growths; the light revealed iridescent fruiting bodies, green and red and white and black, as though the whole colony had been preparing for this very moment. It was a horrifying discovery, I’m sure, yet it meant another day’s pay fixing this mistake. Dunton is like that—during one particular project several dangerous and critical mistakes are inevitably uncovered, which lead to more projects in their turn. One wonders if it is theoretically possible for a single skilled laborer to make progress there, or if he would be buried under new projects emerging faster than he could finis

Homeward bound

I got kicked out of my Peace Corps training a couple days early, so I beat feet and made it as far as Kuruman today. Tomorrow I'll be back in the village and regularly scheduled blogging will resume.

More marathon

Last Saturday I ran another half-marathon. This one was quite a bit flatter than the last one, something which made it a lot harder on my cardiovascular system but also made me much less sore afterwards. I somewhat overestimated my preparation and didn't pace myself that well, so I didn't beat my old time. However I still made it in under two hours, 1:54 on the nose. If I'm going to keep running these things I reckon I should adjust my training program to include more strenuous, shorter workouts. Currently I've been running extremely long distances but rather slowly; my sense is that I need to work on speed more. Any advice?

Mulberries

At the friends' house I was visiting they have a large mulberry tree and I picked a bowl full for sandwiches and snacks. They're delicious. I'm at a training for the next couple days, so blogging might be a bit sparse for awhile. We're at a lovely lodge outside Pretoria and the food is excellent.

Guest Post: Study Finds Four Critical Lessons That Mustn’t Be Learned from Gulf Spill

Dateline: August 17, 2010, Washington DC. In a white paper released today by the American Exceptionalism Institute, analysts identified a quartet of potentially disastrous notions that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could allow to gain a foothold in US public awareness. “Of course the danger is always there, but this time the calamity went on for so long and the damage was so immediate and graphic, we’re concerned one of more of these ideas may go viral,” said Stan Esquo lead author of the study. “Ever since FDR identified fear as the only thing we have to fear, economists have understood that the single biggest factor determining the health of the nation’s economy is how we feel about it. Consumer confidence is a fragile commodity and our enemies could see this as an easy target; any one of these pernicious concepts could bring the country to its knees.” The institute has been battling one of these ideas, namely that we are blindly destroying ourselves by the heedle

Double book review: Fiasco and A History of Iraq

Summary: These two excellent works complement each other nicely to give an overview of Iraq with a focus on the recent war. Up today: Fiasco , by Thomas Ricks, and A History of Iraq , by Charles Tripp. I'll start with the former. Fiasco's main strength is that it is an extremely detailed and well-written account of just what happened to bring the US to war and how the occupation was carried out. The 2003-2004 period is most damning. It was as if Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Napoleon, Lord Nelson, and Eisenhower had been set on a panel with the express purpose of designing a strategy to fail as utterly as any in history. The unbelievable stupidity and incompetence of the high command, both military and civilian, is distinguished from the performance of the actual soldiers, which mostly seemed haplessly unprepared for the conflict they were dumped into, but tried to make the best of an impossible situation. Later, after some shakeups at the top command, techniques that were at le

A personal taxi record

Coming home the other day we got 23 people into a taxi licensed for 15. Can anyone top that in South Africa? (I know in Chad and elsewhere sometimes there are way more.)

The ultimate in light pollution

These things are called Apollo lights. They're basically gigantic streetlights that shine in all directions. I'm staying at a friend's before I head into Pretoria for my midservice physical and they've got one about twenty yards from their house. It makes it brighter than a full moon all night, but it does make their house very easy to find.

Collected links

1. Jon Stewart profile in the NY magazine . 2. Industrial agriculture might be the only thing to save us from the coming food crisis . Something I've long suspected. 3. Bleak houses in Florida . 4. A series on HAMP, the program purportedly designed to deal with the mortgage problem . This is an issue I've totally neglected, but digging into it a little now I see it's the biggest economic policy failure of the Obama administration (with the possible exception of their bizarre foot-dragging on nominees to the Fed board). Ordinary folks got screwed big time by this thing. I'm glad my parents own their house free and clear. 5. Emerson on self reliance.

Fire at the taxi rank

On the way home the other day I noticed the bathroom structure at the taxi rank had burned down. No idea what caused it, and nobody on the taxi seemed to know either.

Politics in action

Why the Dems will probably lose the House: they'll alienate their own supporters before risking Jimmy Carter cooties. It was all a little odd, to say the least. They refused to accept the Carter panel as a historic relic, or even to pose for a picture with the students and the petition they’d brought with them. Asked to do something easy and symbolic to rekindle a little of the joy that had turned out so many of us as volunteers for Obama in 2008, they point blank said no. In a less than overwhelming gesture, they did, however, pass out Xeroxed copies of a 2009 memorandum from Vice President Biden about federal energy policy. I can tell you exactly what it felt like, because those three students were brave and walked out graciously, heads high, and kept their tears back until we got to the sidewalk. And then they didn’t keep them back, because it’s a tough thing to learn for the first time how politics can work. If you want to know about the much-discussed enthusiasm gap between D

The Federal Reserve Board nominees

Yglesias has been pounding this issue for a long time. The Fed has probably more control over the economy than any other body including Congress, yet Obama only got around to nominating people for the three empty seats in April. Apparently Chris Dodd is saying that the Senate might not even get around to voting on these nominations: I think I’ve shouted myself hoarse about the importance of these nominees already, but just to underscore it the Federal Reserve controls the economy. And it’s “independent.” But like the Supreme Court, the President gets to pick who sits on the Board of Governors. This is an important power. Appointing good people and getting them confirmed is really important. Meanwhile, on the “limited amount of time” note how insane the Senate is. A sane legislative body could easily vote on three nominees in twenty minutes if it’s in a rush. If the Senate wants to take more time to actually debate, that would be nice too. But these nominees have been on the table s

Department of WTF, plagiarism bureau

It's pretty common for content to be stolen online, usually from more famous people. But I recently ran across this post , which a mangling of a post my sister wrote some time ago. It's apparently some kind of lake hire company, and it seems like they just processed it through some kind of synonym machine and inserted "lake hire" in random places. The result is like a breed of surrealist poetry. They transformed this: Back at camp the other two cars have a story of their own. The Lieutenant got a flat, too. Blew it on the highway at 65 mph. Loud pop but no loss of control. We now have 4 cars and no spares. It's time to drive the 100+ miles to the nearest large town. Besides, we're out of beer. Now, what do you do when you blow four tires on dirt roads in rental cars? Well, the Captain decides, you try to hide it from the rental company and hope the wrath of our sponsors is less than that of the rental companies. It's only an extra $1000 and a wasted

Collected links

1. Fareed Zakaria says America overreacted to 9/11 . 2. A fascinating review of a new book on Roald Dahl . He was probably my favorite author when I was a kid. 3. The umpteenth result showing no link between vaccines and autism . 4. Thirty ways humanity could end . 5. NYPD alumni take on America's crime problem . This one has a lot of conservative leg-humping but if you can get past that it's still pretty good.

And then there were two

As I predicted, the wife half of the couple that lived in the nearest village is now gone, so there is now only myself and one other (who lives about 20k in the other direction) in the Moshaweng valley (shown in the picture). In a rather strange definition of joke she decided up and disappearing without saying goodbye would be funny. In any case, I'm excited to meet with some of the folks from the primary school in her old village as it is far, far better than my school. There is also a recently refurbished computer lab, courtesy of another volunteer and myself (in a lesser role), so hopefully I can keep myself busy for the remaining year.

Hey, you know any Zulus?

One of the rather surprising things I've noticed here is the fine-grained nature of discrimination. Sure, there's plenty of the standard "all blacks are X" sort of thing, but I often hear more specific complaints. I had heard stories of this sort of thing, but hadn't experienced it myself up close until last weekend. I was buying some blank DVDs at a small shop and, as he was putting the discs into sleeves, he asked, "Hey, you know any Zulus?" "A couple," I said. "Are they looking for a job?" "I don't think so." He sighed wistfully. "I could use a good Zulu...how about Coloureds?" "I know a few, but they've got pretty good jobs already." " You aren't looking for a job, are you?" I laughed. "Not at the moment, but I'll let you know if something opens up." "I just don't want to hire another Tswana. I just fired the fourth Tswana this month. They're la

Making fence

Another one of my host brother's handyman projects has been constructing fence the old-fashioned way. You take this template here and twist the fence together wire by wire. It's immensely time-consuming, but time is one thing we've got here, and it's got to be way cheaper than buying the prefab stuff from Cashbuild. It's also a good excuse for me to hang out with the family, as this thing is set up right outside my door.

Learning styles

This article was an interesting bit on how to learn, but mostly I was glad to learn that a lot of the information that people laid down at my training last year was complete crap, as I suspected: “We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles . “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.” Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack

Obama and civil liberties

" If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties ." -- Barack Obama September 11th seems like a good day to talk liberty. I occasionally have conversations about civil liberties with volunteers here. My view is that, while Obama has to his credit officially revoked torture, he is basically similar or worse than Bush on civil liberties. Not many care, or seem to me at least they'd rather not think about things. A few days back we got even more evidence on for that case: In a 6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ's argument that Bush's rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are "state secrets" and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts. Basically, unless the Supre

On Qur'an burning

A couple weeks ago, I said , "I'm continually amazed at the depths to which American politics continues to sink. Every couple months, I say, 'Jeez, we have to have bottomed out by now. Right? Right?! ' Nope." It continues apace. Today I got an email from the Peace Corps security officer. It read: The Department of State is issuing this Travel Alert to caution U.S. citizens of the potential for anti-U.S. demonstrations in many countries in response to stated plans by a church in Florida to burn Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Demonstrations, some violent, have already taken place in several countries, including Afghanistan and Indonesia, in response to media reports of the church's plans. The potential for further protests and demonstrations, some of which may turn violent, remains high. We urge you to pay attention to local reaction to the situation, and to avoid areas where demonstrations may take place. Once a

Warm fuzzies

Happiness is going on a 20k run listening to Ken Kesey, stretching the stiffness out of my calves, pouring a hot bucket bath, and finding a pot of beans just finished simmering. Alone doesn't have to be lonely.

Pants sizes

Something I've learned recently is that I wear a somewhat larger size than I was used to in the states, at least in terms of relative position in the clothing rack. Though South Africa uses the metric system, they still have a inch-based size scale for pants, or something similar anyways. In the US I used to have to root through piles of larger pants for something that fit (especially as I'm relatively short as well), and they were often the smallest or second-smallest waist size in the place. But since most stores have at least some coverage for someone my size, so I could usually find a pair or two. Here, though, I'm perfectly average or even a bit above average, so my size is very common but also sells out very quickly. All this is basically a lead-in to an interesting graph I found: I wonder the graph would look like for my size. In the US I normally wear a 32 which is comfortably loose. Is it just a linear conversion factor? Or only above a certain size? Perha

Collected links

1. South African government considers internet censorship . 2. Michael Lewis has an amazing look at the Greek fiscal situation . 3. Mushrooms used in a preliminary study to treat depression in cancer patients . 4. US student became a drug kingpin in Mexico . 5. Jeffrey Goldberg (!) sits down with Fidel Castro .

A man after my own heart

"I think it is that many modern Conservatives intuitively base their analysis of the world on a philosophy is that anathema to my worldview. Their view is that if you take a responsible, measured, well-reasoned approach to the world things will work out. Failure is thus a sign that you have not done that. My sense is that this is fundamentally crap. First of all things are not going to work out. You are going to die. Your friends and family are going to die. Everything you care about and everything you ever worked for will be destroyed. This story, our story, only has one ending and it is death and destruction. If you don’t recognize that, you are living in a fantasy world. Second, even in the short term your plans almost certainly won’t work out. Most ideas are bad ideas and there are infinitely more ways to fuck something up than to get it right. To wit, clean living is not some form of salvation. Nor, is prudence assurance that that you and your loved ones will be okay. Sufferi

Adventures in dubious construction

Here you can see my new pit toilet. The old one was one of the positive things I listed during my brief attempt to think positive last October. Well, that thing finally filled up, and this was placed on top of a conveniently extant hole that used to be some kind of basement or cellar, so far as I can tell. They just cleaned out the hole, wrenched the old enclosure off the previous toilet, and suspended it over the hole. I have to give credit to my host brother, who since he mostly recovered from his AIDS/TB nadir has proven quite handy around the place. (I spent some time in the hospital with him a while back, maybe I can wrestle that experience into a post someday.) My host mother hired some men to dig another hole next to the old toilet, but they mostly just drank and gave out after about 4.5 feet. Though the hole probably isn't deep enough to satisfy the building code (guffaw), it's way more than wide enough, as you can see. This should give it enough volume to last

The strike is on hold

Apparently the unions have agreed to a 21-day pause in the strike as the latest terms are negotiated. So today was the first day back in school in almost four weeks. Teaching middle schoolers is just as obnoxious as I remember, but with a 3.5 week break they've forgotten almost everything I taught them. Back to square one.

What's causing income inequality in the USA?

Timothy Noah digs in in a continuing series .

Thomas Maresco, ctd

Thinking more about his death I inevitably think about my own safety in a country that is substantially more dangerous than Lesotho. Even given my lengthy history of muggings , I have to come to the conclusion that though my Peace Corps service is somewhat dangerous, it is far more likely that I would be killed in a taxi accident than in some kind of botched robbery. The vast majority of criminals are not looking to kill someone, rather they just want my money and possessions. Still frightening, though. Jesse chimes in here . Apparently he's got armed guards around his place, though I imagine that's more necessary in a larger town. I have no guards, but my site is so far out in the sticks that no one ever gives me trouble. Though I didn't know Mr. Maresco, he seems from all accounts to have been an excellent sort of fellow. He taught science, coached a youth basketball team, and started a swimming club in the short time he was in Lesotho, and was well liked in his

Face of the day

This is a Brazilian military police officer in São Paulo. What do you suppose is on her mind?

Education in Brazil

Brazil's continuing fitful emergence as South America's first great power of modern times has highlighted some of the similarities it shares with South Africa. They are both massively unequal in terms of income and have daunting crime problems. Brazil's crime is somewhat less of a problem (the homicide rate is 25% less overall, 30 vs. 40 per 100,000), but some of the inner cities have war zone levels of murder. Maceió 's rate, for example, is above 104. Brazil has a disturbing history of racial oppression, and some have called the current inequality problem " social apartheid ." (For my part, I think that probably confuses the issue more than anything else, and is mostly an attempt to brand the Brazilian government with the moral stigma of the Apartheid regime.) In any case, education seems plagued by many of the same problems as here: Over the past decade, Brazil’s students have scored among the lowest of any country’s students taking international exam

Blog news: new domain

As I should have done from the beginning, I now have this blog under my own custom domain, and am now publishing under my real name: Ryan Cooper. I was at first concerned about people from the village being able to find this blog by searching for my name, but I recently learned that when you search "Ryan Cooper" in Google most of the first twenty pages are taken up with a serious pants-type chiseled model, who'd be as hot as me if he had less hair. It was stupidly easy once I got the domain registered and set up, which cost about $11.50 for one year and about half an hour of following instructions online. I used GoDaddy and this page . Blogger even switched over all my archives to the new domain without any prompting whatsoever. Update your links: http://www.doughnutorbitals.com

Thomas Maresco, RIP

Thomas was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho (pronounced leh-SOO-too), a country entirely surrounded by South Africa. He was shot to death in what appears to be a robbery. My thoughts are with his friends and family.

The government should print money

One of my good friends (who is now getting his doctorate at Stanford) has a father who's heavy into the conservative thing. I once got into a discussion with him about the economic crisis and what we should do in response (this was the summer of 2009). He was extremely concerned about inflation. "Obama's going to turn this country in Zimbabwe. He's just printing money!" I said that's exactly what the government should do, at least to some extent, but as I recall my explanation why was rather muddled and I don't think he was convinced. Enter Yglesias, with probably the clearest example I've ever read on how simply printing money can help a brother out: But valuable resources and money are actually different things. To see the relevance of this, imagine what happens if you’ve got a country with full employment, and suddenly some guys show up with suitcases full of really good counterfeit money looking to buy stuff. Well, since people mistake the co

My Setswana name

Kristen has an interesting topic that I don't believe I've mentioned yet: the Setswana name most of us receive, along with the associated barrel of nicknames. Mine is "Thabo," (pronounced TAH-bo) which linguistically speaking comes from the Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, etc.) family of languages, I believe, but has migrated around all South Africa. It is extremely common everywhere—South Africa's illustrious former president had it, though I'll bet he didn't have it emblazoned on his burglar bars. It means "happiness." There are lots of nicknames: T-bos, Thabs, Thabi, etc. None as hilarious as Kristen's, though. One that isn't really a nickname but I don't like is baas , which is Afrikaans for "boss," and carries distinct racial undertones. I try to squelch that when I can but it does pop up now and again.

Linguistics blogging

The recent efforts of the NYT on broad social and cultural phenomena have been rather disappointing. However, this one shows a bit more promise. It's about the idea that which language we speak influences the way we think: In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”). For decades, Whorf’s theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language, from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein’s concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient H

A view from the strike

Yesterday a couple public sector employees who have been heavily involved with the strike stopped by to chat. They described their activities over the past few weeks: toi-tois in Kuruman, Kimberley, and Bloemfontein. They said the ones in Kuruman have been mostly peaceful, but apparently the ones in Kimberley had been more contentious—one had an angry bruise on her calf from being shot with a rubber bullet. They blamed this on the intransigence of the Kimberley police. "They're animals," one said. From their perspective, the strike would be over when Zuma capitulates entirely to the union demands; the recent offer of a 7.5% raise and R800 housing allowance was inadequate. They want 8.6% and R1000 (their demand from the beginning). They said so much money had been spent on the World Cup that it was unfair for South Africans to be denied the money now.

Collected links

1. Real America watch : large cities produce a much smaller share of professional athletes than those under a half million. 2. Paul Krugman explains why goldbugs are totally out to lunch . 3. Egg farms are gross . 4. Banks make some slight moves towards environmentalism . Color me skeptical. 5. Highly dangerous oil exploration continues apace . 6. Ah, Japan . 7. A majority of Republicans think Obama wants to impose Sharia law worldwide .

China advice bleg

I've basically made the decision to continue serving or working abroad after my Peace Corps service in South Africa is over, probably in China or Taiwan as I would like to learn a bit of standard Mandarin and gain some perspective on an up-and-coming power. I've talked a few people who lived there or are currently working there right now who have been enormously helpful, but I'm trying to get as broad a perspective as possible. If you have any advice, contacts, or other thoughts you wouldn't mind sharing, I would be much indebted if you would leave a comment or shoot me an email. UPDATE: It seems that extending my Peace Corps service is out. Apparently your close of service date needs to line up closely with the beginning of service date for the desired country, and Peace Corps is fairly inflexible about COS dates here. So take that into consideration, I guess.